For those of you who run web hosting businesses, are you seeing more bloggers wanting web hosting because they want to blog from their own domains? Where is your demand coming from?

I am asking because I want to become a reseller but I really only want a niche market. I am not even sure, if there are that many who purchase web hosting services in the market I wish to attract.

I am wondering who has been purchasing your web hosting services. I am thinking it is small business owners... ? Is this correct?

Q...

The market is incredibly varied. Some hosts only cater to local, some global. You need to do some research and find your own niche market, preferably one where you have extensive knowledge in. Are you good at optimizing? If so, maybe a company that specializes in forum hosting, etc.

Don't just pick a niche because someone says you should, make up your own mind

yup, quite truth blogging has become quite a popular demand nwadays, consumers under my hosting were most bloggers starting out their personal blog homepage. try going for a dedicated server instead of reseller :)

If the host is all rounded its fine

Sometimes you can figure this out a little bit just by going to the websites of some of the larger hosting companies or domain registrars, they've carefully researched and determined where their demand will come from and how they plan to serve them.

Here's a VERY odd thing... I'm not sure how this is going to help but I know it might and it's something that I'm considering.

I've had not one or two but at least a fistful (4 to 6 I believe?) of folks ask me - within the past month - if it was possible to host a blog with a subdomain from me. They didn't want the ads, they wanted decent bandwidth, and they wanted the ability to make mods themselves or add mods/plug-ins.

Alas, I said no to all of them because it wasn't something I was wanting to accept for business though the price would have been acceptable considering what they would likely have been doing. I have spare domains and I could have easily designated one to it and then done the manual work of adding the FTP account and installing the blog of their choice but, well, there's a deeper reason why I didn't. Right now there's a bit of a debate in the rights of bloggers and the question is what kind of rights are they covered under - basic or are they afforded additional rights due to their content being considered potentially journalism. Putting those folks under a domain that I owned and was accountable for was a risk that I was unwilling to accept.

What is odd is that they all came in a span of maybe two weeks just about two weeks ago. I haven't seen anything since about it and it might have just been a few people who somehow got me confused with someone else or they came from some forum where someone had mentioned us or the likes? I have no idea really. That they all wanted subdomains was the real kicker.

Had they had their own domain name then I'd have had no issues with it at all but I figured that putting them under a domain that was associated with me AND the potential for backlash with blogs today that it wasn't worth the money. IIRC I checked headers and they didn't come from same IP blocks or anything, it was just odd and perhaps a fluke so I'm not at all sure if it helps or just serves to confuse you more.

On the other hand it's VERY simple to take a blog and market it and to make it rank REALLY well fairly quickly. It's not a specific area I'm looking to market in so, well, you can certainly take that idea, present it like that, and perhaps it will work out for you. For folks who want to get a decent ranking pretty quick or actually have a simple script that can truly function as a complete CMS then it's certainly something to advertise if you're interested in the responsibility. Push the one click install with Fantastico (if applicable) and things like sitemap.xml automation and ease of ranking with a blog that maintains fresh content. It's a risk that you have to pick to try and unless you want to pay Gartner or the likes to do a study then, well, you'll have to go with your gut.

Hmm... I actually had to go to my blog to get this:

Technorati Weblog: State of the Blogosphere, April 2006 Part 1: On Blogosphere Growth:
http://technorati.com/weblog/2006/04/96.html

:) It was easier than posting a link to my own stuff. I wouldn't wanna get deleted today. Tomorrow? Maybe, right now I'm posting to at least have it looked at.

A look there shows that the blog-rush is still on and still running with a force that's to be reckoned with. My personal blog gets insane rankings and is truly about the most retarded bit of gibberish ever posted online. No, I don't get it either. Some 40 folks or so a day at last check subscribed to it via an RSS reader? No one ever responds to the gibberish but they stop by to visit. Freaks...

Anyhow, blogs are there. They're a part of what's (I so hate this phrase) Web 2.0 (like AJAX is really all that new and, well, what's AJAX going to do for the blind or the people with motor skill problems?) and the corporate media has declared that to be the direction of the 'net and so we must follow. If you can push blogs and sell them then, well, it may well be in your best interest.

KGIII